SO parliament stopped for summer recess last week but neither my office nor myself have stopped.

It was quite strange not to be driving through to Edinburgh on Monday night but I did have a journey to Motherwell in the afternoon as I had a meeting with the Chief Executive of the Scottish Ambulance Service.

Last December you may remember that I accompanied a local paramedic crew for their full shift and I became aware of a number of issues as a result.

The crew and myself attended the meeting.

It was an extremely helpful meeting with various issues raised and some useful information shared. In comparison with the same week last year, there had been an increase of 12.76 per cent in calls with 10,507 calls.

The high temperatures have had an effect with breathing problems, fainting, reports of people being unconscious and Road Traffic Accidents being amongst the top five call outs.

However, despite these increasing demands on the services, the median response time for the most serious category of call (such as cardiac arrests) was 5 minutes 55 seconds and for all Immediately Life Threatening calls it was 7 minutes 15 seconds. Our ambulance crew do a tremendous job helping us when we need it and like every other service they are receiving more calls than ever before.

I was surprised however to be told that they have even had calls for toothache. I’m not sure the Ambulance Service was established to deal with calls of that nature.

I would like to thank both the crew and management again for allowing me to spend the shift with them but also to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone at the Scottish Ambulance Service for the ever increasing job they do to help us.

I attended the funeral of the late Douglas Rae OBE and instead of it being a somber occasion it certainly was a celebration of Mr. Rae’s life and his many achievements as well as private life. Inverclyde has certainly lost someone who cared deeply for this community and we will be the poorer for that loss. However, Mr. Rae has left a hugely positive legacy and for that we should be thankful.

Finally, I had the opportunity to visit the Greenock Cut and go for a cycle along the newly installed pathway with David Hill from the Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park.

As readers will know, the Cut is stunning and is a real gem in the Inverclyde tourism offer. With our excellent weather of late, the cycle was just perfect and the views outstanding. If cycling isn’t your thing but you fancy a walk in the sunshine, the Cut is certainly worth doing.